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Thoreau writes in his journal:

It is a fresh, cool summer morning. From the road at N. Barrett’s, [Nathan Barrett] on my way to P. Blood’s [Perez Blood] at 8.30 A.M., the Great Meadows have a slight bluish misty tinge in part; elsewhere a sort of hoary sheen like a fine downiness, inconceivably fine and silvery far away,—the light reflected from the grass blades, a sea of grass hoary with light, the counterpart of the frost in spring . . . Last night, a sultry night which compelled to leave all windows open, I heard two travellers talking aloud, was roused out of my sleep by their loud, day-like, and somewhat unearthly discourse at perchance one o’clock. From the country, whiling away the night with loud discourse. I heard the words ‘Theodore Parker” and “Wendell Phillips” loudly spoken, and so did half a dozen of my neighbors, who also were awakened. Such is fame . . . I passed a regular country dooryard this forenoon, the unpainted one-story house, long and low with projecting stoop, a deep grass-plot unfenced for yard, hens and chickens scratching amid the chip dirt about the door,—this last the main feature, relics of wood-piles, sites of the wooden towers.

(Journal, 2:280-281)

2 July 1852. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Bigelow tells me that saddlers sometimes use the excrescence, the whitish fungus, on the birch to stick their awls in. Men fund a use for everything at last . . .

On my way to the Hubbard Bathing-Place, at sundown.

The blue-eyed grass shuts up before night, and methinks it does not open very early the next morning . . .

Nature is reported not by him who goes forth consciously as an observer, but in the fullness of life. To such a one she rushes to make her report. To the full heart she is all but a figure of speech. This is my year of observation, and I fancy that my friends are also more devoted to outward observation than ever before . . .

(Journal, 4:172-176)

2 July 1853. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

The peetweets are quite noisy about the rocks in Merrick’s pasture when I approach; have eggs or young there, which they are anxious about. The tall anemone in blossom, and no doubt elsewhere much earlier,—a week or ten days before this,—but the drought has checked it here.

(Journal, 5:309)

2 July 1854. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

4 A.M.—To Hill . . .

P.M.—To Flint’s Pond and Smith’s Hill with C. [William Ellery Channing] . . . (Journal, 6:381-382).

Boston, Mass. James T. Fields writes to Richard Bentley, in London, England:

Mr. [Ralph Waldo] Emerson has already written you concerning Mr. Thoreau’s book and as you said in yr letter you wished to see some of the sheets we send them with this. Please let us hear from you at once if you accept the book that we may forward a complete copy. Mr. Thoreau will expect $100 for the copyright . . . We shall publish on the 1st of Sept. or the 15th of August.

(The Cost Books of Ticknor and Fields and their predecessors, 1832-1858, 289-90)

2 July 1855. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

At 2 P.M.—Thermometer north side of house . 93º

Air over river at Hubbard’s Bath . . . 88º

Water six feet from shore and one foot deep . . 84½º

near surface in middle, where up to neck . . 83½º

at bottom in same place, pulling it up quickly 83½º

Yet the air on the wet body, there being a strong southwest wind, feels colder than the water.

(Journal, 7:431)

2 July 1856.

Concord, Mass. Thoreau writes in his journal:

Return to Concord.

Looked at the birds in the Natural History Rooms in Boston. Observed no white spots on the sparrow hawk’s wing, or on the pigeon or sharp-shinned hawk’s. Indeed they were so closed that I could not have seen them. Am uncertain to which my wing belongs . . .

(Journal, 8:398)

New Bedford, Mass. Daniel Ricketson writes in his journal:

Thermometer at about 50, 5 A.M. My friend H. D. Thoreau left in the early train this morning for his home at Concord, Mass. Took him to the Tarkiln Hill station. Channing, [William Ellery Channing] who spent the night with us, left about 9 to walk to town. During the visit of my friend Thoreau we have visited the Middleborough Ponds twice, the Island Naushon, Sconticut Neck, etc. His visit has been a very pleasant one to myself and family. He is the best educated man I know, and I value his friendship very much. His health is quite poor at present, and I fear he will hardly reach old age, which from his unconcern in regard to it the more strengthens my fears for his loss.

(Daniel Ricketson and His Friends, 295-296)

2 July 1857. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

P.M.—To Gowing’s Swamp.

Flannery says that there was a frost this morning in Moore’s Swamp on the Bedford road, where he has potatoes . He observed something white on the potatoes about 3.30 A.M. and, stooping, breathed on and melted it. Minott says he has known a frost every month in the year, but at this season it would be a black frost, which bites harder than a white one . . .

(Journal, 9:465)

2 July 1858. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

A.M.—Start out for White Mountains in a private carriage with Edward Hoar . . .

Spent the noon close by the old Dunstable graveyard, by a small stream north of it . . .

Walked to and along the river and bathed in it . . .

I returned through the grass up the winding channel of our little brook to the camp again . . .

Put up at a tavern in Merrimack, some miles after passing over a pretty high, flat-topped hill in road, whence we saw the mountains (with a steep descent to the interval on right). 7 P. M.—I walked by a path through the wood northeast to the Merrimack . . .

(Journal, 11:3-5)

2 July 1859. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

P.M.—To Stow’s chestnut and Thaspium aurcum . . .

Waded out thirteen rods from rock in Flint’s Pond, and was only up to my middle . . . (Journal, 12:216).

2 July 1860. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

A.M.—To lilies above Nut Meadow . . . (Journal, 13:383).